


your heart

by antheeia



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Internal Monologue, M/M, No Dialogue, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 10:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13409430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheeia/pseuds/antheeia
Summary: Because you hated me, and it was the closest you ever came to loving me.





	your heart

**Author's Note:**

> Quickly written after reading the last chapter of the manga, but the ending in crybaby is similar so I think you can read it anyway (should you wish to for some reason).
> 
> I literally wrote this in less than 12 hours, with a night of sleep in between, because Devilman hurt me that much.
> 
> Unbetaed, all mistakes are all mine, feel free to point them out. 
> 
> I hope you like it.
> 
> ( **Beware of the gore tag.** There's corpse kissing and corpse desecration ahead.)

They say the line separating love from hate is very thin.

For this reason, I am happy, even if just a bit. Because you hated me, and it was the closest you ever came to loving me.

Because — can you imagine? do you realise? — in the whole of time and space, we found each other.

 _I found you_.

I could have lived anywhere, I could have done this years later, when you were dead and gone, lived your life peacefully without even knowing I really existed, or earlier, before you were even given a chance to be born. I could have been any other human but Ryo Asuka, and I could have met anyone, I could have had any friend but Akira Fudou. 

But I was Ryo.

And I met you, Akira.

You of all people, among all humans.

You were my friend.

And I fell in love with you.

I fell in love with your gentleness. I fell in love with that purity of yours. I fell in love with your innocence. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? That I, Satan, should fall in love with such things, with _you_.

I fell in love with everything I took away from you. And yet, even when you lost your innocence, your purity, your gentleness, I still loved you.

Because your heart was the same.

Your heart.

Even if humanity had won, even if I had let them prosper for another one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand years, there would never be another heart like yours, I am sure.

You were special. Your heart was.

And that's why I wished to save it, and save you.

I was weak, probably. Imperfect, for sure. And maybe I still am, because I don't regret it — falling in love with you, I mean.

 _I don't regret it_.

The only thing I truly regret is that it had to end this way.

Will these human feelings ever leave me? Or were they the price to pay for what I wanted to do? 

Will I have to live with them for eternity?

Because I was responsible for wiping out humanity, is this my punishment?

I wish you could answer my questions. You knew the human heart better than I could ever do. I was an outsider, after all.

Maybe you could explain it to me, how exactly these feelings work. How long they will last. If I will ever stop feeling this pain. If I will ever live another day of peace. If my feelings will ever fade away. If the time will come, one day, when my chest won't ache when I think about you. If this love will ever become just a memory.

Something tells me it won't. That this is the hell I'll have to live in for eternity. That I can't unlearn being human — I didn't predict that: I told you, I was a fool.

I don't blame you for holding it against me. I destroyed humanity like God wanted to destroy demons: I'm no different from Him. But I like to think that my love for you redeems me, even if just a bit.

If only your hand was still warm and your grip strong, I know you would have words for me, hateful and desperate, but maybe also gentle and kind. I would cherish them regardless.

But your corpse now lays out here to waste, and my every effort to save you has been rendered vain.

Everything I sacrificed, it still wasn't enough.

Maybe nothing would have been enough.

Your lips are cold when they meet my own.

You taste like blood, and at some point, you taste like tears. My own tears: another human legacy.

I hold you tight, and your body is stiff and heavy, and I wish I had one last minute with you, that I could wish you goodnight before your eternal slumber, that I could ask you one last question because this makes no sense to me.

I am angry.

I realise it when I kiss you again and your lips are again hopelessly still, excruciatingly lifeless.

And I am angry. I am sad. I feel so many unwanted emotions, and I look at your half-destroyed body and I can't wrap my mind around the fact that your lifeless, unbeating heart still owns mine.

It's easy to tear your chest open. _Effortless_.

You don't even bleed that much: your unbeating heart is not pumping blood anymore, after all.

I rip away your skin, your muscles, your ribs, I even dig out your lungs and I stare at your heart, there inside your mauled chest.

I pull it out, and I can almost imagine how beautiful it was when it was still beating, bright red, full of life, instead of this greyish colour that stinks of death.

I stare at it, and I know it doesn't hold the answers I seek, that it cannot give me anything.

I close my eyes.

I know that it's just a piece of meat, but I still hold it tight in my grip, tight, tighter, until I feel my fingers rip the dead tissue apart and blood sprays on my face. 

Is that screaming voice my own?

Is that your name I'm screaming?

I'm truly pitiful and recognising it only makes the mess of feelings inside of me more tangled.

I hold your heart close to my chest. I hug it tight.

I'm sorry, Akira.

 _Akira_.

How comes I still love you, Akira, even if what's left for me to love are just my desperate memories and the bittersweet awareness that the last thing you did was returning the grip on my hand?

How comes I still love you, even though you didn't?

How comes I don't hate you, even though you did?

How comes I still love you, _Akira_?


End file.
